Sporadic RTW Dispatch #11
People's Republic of China - Part 3

by

Datong

On the evening of June 23, 1996, our train
pulled out of Beijing and headed west into a lightning storm. After 300km (185
miles) and nine hours of sleep, the crew woke us at 5:00am to a view of rolling
hills covered with short, green scrub-grass and orange-clay houses, as well as
smokestacks from industrial sites. We were the only Westerners arriving on the
train and, along with the rest of the passengers, were practically alone in the
Datong (DAH-toong) station at 5:20am; locals staring at us like we just got out
of a space-ship -- they were quiet, but pretty beat-up looking. One beggar
spotted us in the waiting area: surprising how fast they can move on bad
crutches!

Not seeing a place to store luggage, we
walked up the street following a friend's directions. Of course, we missed our
turn. Taking the second turn we met an older gentleman exercising. He escorted
us along a path behind the hotel through an alley, to the front of the hotel.
The plaza outside was packed with people of all ages exercising and playing, as
it was Sunday, their day of rest, if that makes any sense. The younger ones were
playing badminton and a modified game of hackey-sack.

Datong is known for its coal mines, and has a
population of more than two million. It couldn't be much uglier, with its
concrete, steel, and coal dust. The pollution burned our eyes and throats. Yet
somehow, the air was dry and cool, with the sky being a pretty bright-blue,
lightly covered with whispy clouds.

This is the kind of place that inspires you
to take care of business fast and leave as soon as possible. Dropping our bags
in our room, we headed straight back to the train station to find a city bus.
CITS (government tourist office) was determined to put us on one of their
inflated tour buses. We escaped the fumes from the kerosene-doused wood-chips.
Workers were busy pushing them around the the station with a dust mop to clean
the floors. We went off on our own since we knew the city had a decent bus
system.

Outside the CITS office, we met a Chinese
woman who spoke English very well. She tried to convince us how difficult it
would be to get to the caves unless we spoke Chinese, or went with someone who
did. We confused her by saying that we weren't going to the caves -- isn't
everyone visiting Datong here to see the caves? She watched, puzzled as we went
on our way.

We hopped on a city bus, and the conductor
let us know where to get off to catch another bus out of the city. An eager
crowd of minibus touts immediately welcomed us. Showing them the Chinese
characters for the Hanging Monastery, they practically lifted us into their bus.
We asked the price and were quoted twice the going rate. A woman seated behind
us heard the rate and busted out laughing, so we got out and started walking to
the next minibus. This got their attention, and they quickly dropped the fare to
the standard rate. They made up for their 'loss' by dropping us uphill from the
entrance to the monastery when we wouldn't agree to return to town with them --
you can't win with these buzzards!

We expected the highly over-rated monastery
to be built into the rock, but it just sat flat on a shelf against the cliff
face with poles supporting the overhanging portion. It was rundown, and even
less impressive up close. It was a museum, as the monks had long since abandoned
it.

After strolling through the monastery, we
returned to the parking lot and were summoned by a minibus driver. He asked too
much and wouldn't bargain, so we immediately left and started walking back up
the hill. We were 50m (165 ft) away when he woke from his gouging stupor and
started yelling "Hello" to us. He waved us back and agreed to the
normal price. We were back in dingy Datong almost three hours later and wearily
returned to our hotel for an instant-noodle dinner.

The next morning, Marc went to the train
station to buy tickets. He was sent to an office on the side of the building.
There he was given a piece of paper and escorted up a narrow staircase to an
office window on a landing between floors. After waiting thirty minutes, the
window opened and he received more paper. He was then sent back to the other
office to wait in line with others.

After twenty minutes, a man came in and cut
in line. Marc stared directly at the guy and repeatedly told him in English to
get in line. Nobody understood Marc, but the meaning was clear and the guy went
to the end of the line. Marc paid some money, was given a small cardboard
ticket and was sent back to his starting point, the main ticket window. He
finished paying and received the rest of the ticketing information. He returned
to the hotel for the usual post train-station trauma recovery! Sometimes it's
better to pay the small charge and let CITS get the tickets.

When we started eight weeks earlier, we tried
to determine the right bus from Kunming to Dali. We never realized how valuable
learning to recognize Chinese characters would be. It saved us time and money
when buying and verifying bus and train tickets, and preventing scams. It's
funny how you know you've arrived in a city, since you find that the name of the
city is the only thing you can read. It's surprising the number of times they
use it on signs and businesses. Reading the train schedule was a real challenge,
and helped out a bit, making us more confident of our ability to navigate.

Although the language isn't a mystery, there
is a formidable language barrier. Still it is no more difficult than in other
countries, if you have a book, learn a few words, or are a good mime. After six
weeks, the tones finally became familiar enough for us to pronounce words
consistently, and well enough to be understood.

When you stay in a place long enough, the
locals get used to you and loosen up. The workers at the construction site near
the hotel had no problem remembering us, but saw that we had our packs on and
were leaving, so they gave us a farewell "Hello!" The kids also gave
us curious "hellos." Our opinion of Datong improved a bit. The CITS
guys spotted us again and offered a tour, and to get us train tickets. They were
astounded to hear that someone had actually accomplished both on their own.

Locating the baggage locker room outside the
station, we locked our bags down inside and were ready to do some more
sightseeing. As we went to pay, the team of surly, women baggage clerks quoted a
rate three times the original. We could clearly see the correct rate on the
other bags and in the logbook entries altough some small bags had lower rates,
none came close to what they were trying to gouge us for. We had nearly given up
on sightseeing when a visit to CITS confirmed the correct storage rate, and
directions to another locker room. Marc checked it out, and returned with good
news, yet again by the time we got there with the bags, the rate had tripled. No
use arguing, we just walked out.

The greed in transactions is exhausting to
deal with, and was nowhere near the fair bargaining we were used to. We know we
were overcharged much of the time, but we accepted that going in. Some tourists
like to say that the Chinese are always trying to steal from them, yet we didn't
have problems like that, nor did we ever catch anyone short-changing us. In
fact, they sometimes gave back too much by adding the total wrong or counting
the change wrong -- perhaps they should dust off their abacuses. We always gave
it back, not out of the principle, but only to see if it shocked them that they
had made a mistake, or that somebody actually gave it back. Not surprisingly,
they showed no response.

We decided to pay the CITS office another
visit and tell them what we thought of this hole-in-the-ground. They surprised
us by offering to hold our bags for the standard rate. After eating our way
through a stack of eight delicious boazi (steamed buns filled with pork,
cabbage, and more), we boarded a minibus to Xin Kaili on the west side of town,
then transferred to the #3 bus.

The road wound through brown, desolate, and
barren hills dotted with adobe homes. Reaching the mining area we saw huge,
coal-laden trucks. In an hour we had gone from spotlessly clean to looking like
coal miners covered with black dust. We looked exactly like the sides of the
road. The cheerful bus attendant made sure we got off at the Yungang (yoon-gong)
Buddhist Caves. The caves are a UN World Cultural Heritage Site that Marc knew
about from reading Lynn Salmon's
"A Trip Along the Silk Road."

Dodging a Japanese tour group, we visited
twenty-one of the fifty caves dating back to the 5th-century. Only two of the
wooden monasteries were still standing, leaving the other caves exposed to the
elements, and partially eroded from the Gobi Desert winds. It's easy to see why
monks would want to stay in the caves, as they are cool inside and provide a
nice escape from the heat. The colorful frescoes and Buddha statues sculpted
into the side of the sandstone mountain were impressive, some as high as 17m (55
ft), inside 20m-high (64 ft) caves.

After our tour, we crossed the street and
stood on a wall, where we were blasted by a coal-dust storm every time a vehicle
passed. Finally, we were rescued by the bus twenty-five minutes later. A lady in
the back of the bus showed us a box with three baby owls in it -- wonder where
they were going!

Back at the intermediate bus stop on the west
side of Datong, we were spotted by the driver of a futuristic fiberglass
trishaw. He wanted to know where we were going and pointed to his vehicle, while
Marc pointed to the bus stop sign. This drew a chuckle from twenty red-cheeked
locals (of Mongolian descent) who crowded around to watch the show.

Crowds in China are magnetic, attracting
anything that passes, so we were soon surrounded by piercing eyes and attentive
ears. A couple next to us struck up a 'conversation' with their limited English,
which the crowd enjoyed greatly. They'd been studying English for a year and
seemed to be enjoying the practice. Getting on the bus together, they welcomed
us to Datong and asked how we liked it -- a trick question of sorts!

Back at the train station, we stopped to get
our bags. This time we avoided the kerosene fumes by hanging out in the CITS
office and talking to the agent for an hour. He asked what we thought of Chinese
toilets -- another trick question! We were used to them, but he'd met many
Westerners on tour groups who were appalled. He said he had a Western-style
toilet in his home. He also talked about theft and how he has to live simply to
avoid being a target, although he could afford better. Houses here are like
prisons with steel doors, and window bars. He said he saw a man a few nights
earlier stealing a manhole cover, which would be sold to the metal company. Marc
told him about the aluminum rails that are stolen along US bridges, and that
some people try to steal copper wire from streetlights, only to be accidentally
electrocuted to death.

The train rolled in, so it was time to say
"Zàijiàn" and find a comfortable spot for the 36-hour,
1600km (1000 mile) ride. (As if Datong didn't have enough problems, we read that
a plague of locusts descended a year later and devoured 265,000 acres of crops.)

Xian

We didn't go there, we didn't even get close.
We took a detour northwest through the Inner Mongolian Desert, and down along
the Yellow River to Lanzhou. So, why are we including it? Because we are always
asked, "Did you go?"

Xian (she-ahn, or see-ahn) is the most
polluted city in China, and one of the most polluted cities in the world. It
also has a reputation for crime, yet neither of these facts deters us since we
have experienced plenty of polluted cities in Asia, and crime is a constant we
have to deal with back home. The central attraction in Xian is the Terracotta
Soldiers archaeological site. We aren't the best at appreciating such things,
especially at exorbitant entry fees. We had given up this idea years ago, but
soon after entering China we reconsidered it. We had since learned ways of
getting in affordably, and were swept along by the rave reviews. By the time we
arrived in Beijing, the negative stories had returned us to our original
decision.

One man we met was irate after getting
inside. He soon realized that the limited view of the exhibit was all he was
going to get. He didn't like the fact that he couldn't walk around the worksite,
which has to be kept secure since tourists have a bad habit of touching things.
At first they tried to rush him through, but he was determined to get his
money's worth. He took his time studying the figures for thirty minutes. Like
other visitors, he felt, "It was too clean and new, resembling a fabricated
tourist attraction."

For being such an important archaeological
site, he was surprised at "how slowly they were uncovering the rest,
especially given the enormous profit they were making". Later, we read that
the government stopped excavating more sites because the statues were
deteriorating due to oxidation. The government also felt that displaying more
sites would only be redundant to what is already available for viewing.

Not having gone there, we can only offer you
his story. We were still confused by the fact that half the tourists like it and
half find it extremely disappointing. We tried to rationalize that short-term
tourists sped by on their two-week vacations sporting "rose-tinted"
glasses, yet there was no consistency in this theory, nor among the jaded
backpackers. For more information on this, see the October 1996 issue of
National Geographic.

We had hardly settled into our 'new home' on
the train, when Marc started talking to Zhao, a young engineer who was a repair
technician for ultrasound machines. This medical equipment is popular since it
is used to determine if a fetus is a boy or a girl. Many women terminate
pregnancy if the fetus isn't male, even though it is illegal to use the
equipment for this purpose.

The One-Child Policy was started in the 1970s
after the government realized that its food production could not sustain its
population at the high growth rate then. They set the legal minimum age for
marriage at twenty-two for men, and twenty for women. This is not enforced in
much of the country, although it is enforced in the cities. Their goal was one
child per family, and where they have been successful in the cities, but the
national average still remains at a high 2.25.

One reason for their failure is the strong
desire throughout society for a male heir to continue the family name. In some
instances, especially overseas, a son will provide for the parents in their old
age. Fines for having more children don't begin to compare to the additional
income a son will bring. Government entitlements (welfare) are often revoked
too. To meet limits, couples are harassed, women are encouraged to undergo
sterilization, and pregnant women are urged to have an abortion.

The One-Child Policy isn't popular, but ways
around it are. Many don't register their daughters, others visit relatives in
the countryside to conceal the birth from local officials. Some girls are given
up for adoption, and sadly there are cases of female infanticide.

Zhao was based in Beijing and was travelling
on a business trip to Datong and Hohhot. He said he often travelled to Seattle
for intensive training, but didn't enjoy it since there was no time for leisure.
He sometimes travels to San Jose to visit his grandmother, who wants him to
migrate to the US, but he isn't interested. We thought this was unusual since
everyone else wanted to go. He likes it here since it is his country, he is
comfortable, and he enjoys being in his culture and eating his food.

We had been talking for a while when a vendor
strolled by with a cart of food, reminding us that we were hungry. Zhao invited
us to join him in the dining car, and we followed him through six cars, passing
some large men who didn't look very Chinese, but did say
"Hello" and "Hi" to us.

The kitchen staff was sitting around having
dinner and told Zhao that he was late. Chastised, we started to leave with
dejected looks, when they called us back. Minutes later, the table was loaded
with food. There were plates of inedible pork-fat with hot chilis, celery and
mushrooms sauteed with strips of steak-fat, scrambled eggs with tomatoes,
eggplant with chilis, three bowls of rice, and three bowls of soup. Zhao
polished off two bowls of rice and we split one bowl, doing our best to make a
dent in the filling meal. He insisted on buying, which is always a pleasant
surprise in China.

We sat for a while talking, then started the
long trek back to our bunk. Halfway there the BIG guys detained us, while Zhao
disappeared off in the distance. The guys turned out to be Greek-looking Kazakhs
from Yining, near the Soviet border. They were on their way back from a business
trip in Beijing. First, they wanted to know if either of us was Muslim. Then
they gave Marc his first lesson in the Uighur (wee-guhr, or oi-guhr) language,
and were impressed when he rattled off the numbers. With his beard, Marc looked
like a bona fide member of the group.

A well-spoken woman and a Chinese man who
wanted to practice a few English words he'd mastered, helped translate from
English to Chinese so the Uighurs could teach Marc some Uighur words. Off in the
background, an older Chinese man's comments made the whole group laugh. Karin
looked on from what she thought was a safe distance behind the last in the
group, until the older man pulled out his passport and pointed to it, then
indicated something having to do with Karin and himself, but she quickly pointed
to Marc and said, "Zhanfu" (husband). The group roared with laughter
-- no telling what his plans were!

A train worker tried to ruin the atmosphere
by tapping Karin on the shoulder and waving his index finger in the direction of
the other car, but our newfound friends set him straight and took the
opportunity to find out which car we 'lived' in.

We made it back to our bed hours later, but
stayed up talking to Zhao, who was due to arrive at his destination at 11:00pm.
He told us that Han Chinese, like himself, weren't safe in Xinjiang (sin-jahng)
Province, which explained why he hadn't stuck around earlier. He won't go to
Kashgar in the far northwest because "Chinese aren't liked there." He
explained that the government forces the children of the rich to go to school in
Beijing in order to control and assimilate them! We said "Goodnight"
to Zhao, ending our day on a much more 'pleasant' note.

At 7:00am sharp, we were blasted into
consciousness by music which sounded like someone pulling the tails of a
thousand cats. This was followed by an announcement that could only have been
meant: "Get your lazy bones up and off those bunks, now." While the
rest of the passengers obeyed the orders, we put in our earplugs and dug in
deeper until 8:30am. We were on vacation with no deadlines.

The terrain became more arid as we rumbled
along, with adobe homes spotting the landscape the entire way. Scrub-brushes
dotted the sand dunes, while herds of sheep kept shepherds company. The track
mostly followed the Yellow River where its muddy-brown waters had carved a path
through the undulating, golden beach sands of the Tengger Desert.

The Yellow River is the second-longest river
in China and the birthplace of Chinese civilization. It originates in the
mountains of Qinghai and meanders 5460km (3400 miles) through the north of China
into the ocean east of Beijing. The river takes its name from the color of the
unusually large amount of silt it carries. This silt continually raises the
river's level making it necessary to contain it with dikes, some as high as high
as 15m (50 ft). The river has always been regarded as 'China's sorrow' due to
its tendency to flood.

Scattered throughout the desert were dark,
contrasting patches of green agricultural plots. There were grapevines,
cemeteries, and even something that looked like a castle in a water park. As
evening fell, we crossed into rockier terrain, where some barren, desolate,
brown hills spread out below for many kilometers. They formed a dense pattern
of low peaks, looking like the face of a meat tenderizing hammer. Some of the
hills had cave-homes dug into them. In stark contrast to the surrounding dry
landscape, there were a few fields of planted grains and vegetables. These
oases were caressed by the wind -- some had 10m-diameter (31 ft) sinkholes in
the middle of them.

As the sun set, Marc finished Rudyard
Kipling's Kim. This was fascinating introduction to Western China,
Pakistan, and India, as well as The Great Game. Following the Yellow
River, the train passed a string of lights from a chairlift tracing the spine of
a mountain. We rolled to a stop in a modern city of three million, on the edge
of the frontier.

Lanzhou

From the moment we got off the train we knew
we liked this place, even with its construction noise and dust. We were
surprised at how comfortable it felt outside. The temperature was pleasant and
it had a nice atmosphere.

We had no problem getting a bus to the hotel
with the help of locals, who happily got us on the right one. The conductor made
sure we got off at our hotel, and a passenger who got off the bus with us,
escorted us all the way to the front desk.

The first person we met in Lanzhou (lahn-joe)
was Kersti, a friendly woman from Hamburg, Germany. She was fluent in Chinese
and had been studying Asian Marketing in Lanchang. She helped us get checked
into a nice double and told us about life in China until bedtime arrived.

The next morning at the travel office, we met
two Dutch women who had taken the Trans-Siberian railway six weeks earlier.
They had travelled for three months seeing most of China. Jeanette, a painter in
Castricum, whose father is a "stiff-necked (meaning proud)
Frieslander", was raised in the south of Holland. She is a 67-year-young
grandmother, who has been a backpacker 'forever'. She lugs at least 21kg (48
lbs) on her back, has travelled across the Sahara Desert, and is very happy and
lively, as well as being in great shape.

Dorine, her travel companion from Amsterdam,
had travelled through India, where she learned English. They met on a
tour-package in Algeria and had travelled together since. The girl from the
travel service escorted all four of us on a search for vitamin-C and
decongestants at the pharmacy.

Afterwards, we shared travel stories over
lunch and the ladies brushed up on their Dutch language skills. Jeanette even
gave us a pile of drop (Karin's favorite salty, Dutch licorice), and some
oral rehydration salts (ORS) which we'd been unable to find in China. Dorine had
lost her flashlight on a tour bus in Xiahe, so we promised to look for it while
there, and deliver it to her in Holland if we found it.

Saying "Tot ziens" as they left to
catch a train, we knew that we'd run into them again somewhere along the way. We
hopped on a bus and headed to the center of town to find the Public Security
Bureau (PSB). We had no problem getting our second one-month visa extension
from the nice staff for RMB 50 ($6) each, double what we had paid in Kunming.

We walked through the alleys, past some
amazing peaches, then strolled along the main road full of women's clothing
stores. Finally finding a European-Asian Department Store, we replenished our
worn-out wardrobe. On our way back 'home', we tried the smooth and delicious
yogurt, recommended to us by a traveller we had met a few months earlier in
Laos.

Lanzhou brought back memories of Indonesia
and Malaysia. There are a few mosques, and we saw women with scarf-covered
heads and men with white Haji caps, but we doubt many have been to Mecca.

Our favorite hangout was without doubt the
night market down the street, where the aromas, sights, and sounds would
entertain us for hours. We soon discovered that the ruo-jian-biao, a
thick flat bread split open and filled with fried mutton, onions, and bell
peppers, was as tasty as it smelled and looked. We could have eaten five more,
but we had spotted other delights earlier.

We continued walking through the market,
scoping out the other stalls until we found a grill covered in simmering clay
pots. They were filled with glass noodles, tofu, seaweed-like leafy vegetables,
and squash slivers, topped with breaded pork balls. They took our order, dumped
the contents of a bowl up-side-down into another bowl, served it with a flat
Muslim bread, and charged us a mere RMB 4.5 ($.50). We knew we had no choice but
to sit down and enjoy the ambience while devouring our savory and filling meal.
Hoped to find more where we were going.

Later, we sucked down two liters of water,
probably due to the combination of Mono Sodium Glutamate (MSG) in the food and
the very dry desert climate at 1600m (4900 ft). MSG, a naturally-occurring
chemical that looks like salt, is called a 'flavor enhancer' since it makes your
tastebuds come alive. It is known as: MSG and Accent in the States, Vetsin and
Glutamaat in the Netherlands, Tasting Powder in Pakistan, and
Aji-No-Moto in Japan, It's called Weijing in China, where they have a saying,
"Only a bad cook uses weijing." It's not easy to remember to say,
"Bu yao weijing" at every meal, and it rarely works.

In some countries, MSG is banned since many
people are sensitive to it, and have had bad reactions. We can handle it pretty
well, probably because we had built up a tolerance, but sometimes the cook got
carried away, and we would go home wondering why we were so thirsty. Thirty
minutes later, and a liter of water each, we knew the answer.

Some nights we couldn't sleep too well, our
heads thumping from the increased heart rate. Our worst reaction kept us up
until 3:00am, and then it was a restless night of frantic dreams. By the end of
our stay, we were eating only two meals per day, and limiting the number of
dishes we would order. There is no mystery now why many Chinese menus in the
States say, "We do not use MSG." We were surprised to find out how
much of it is used in the States to marinate fried-foods, and also how prevalent
it is on the ingredient lists on spice jars.

Back at the hotel we again ran into Kersti.
Her husband Trykver, and brother-in-law Ingjalt, had just arrived from Germany
and Beijing to join her for a journey along the Silk Road. We stood in the
hallway and listened to their experiences, which ranged from the flag-raising
ceremony at a Japanese-owned Asia Supermarket in Beijing complete with
choreographed motorcycle show, to their Lijiang visit shortly after the
earthquake. They described how people wasted no time rebuilding their homes,
first pulverizing the fallen adobe, then re-mixing it with water.

We exchanged stories about our great day and
soon moved onto a higher level of exchange. Kersti's eyes lit up when she heard
about Karin's latest acquisition, the drop liquorice. She started dancing
and offering anything from her huge German care-package that just arrived. It
was our turn to get excited when she donated a chunk of Gouda cheese for a few
pieces of 'drop'.

Feeling guilty, Marc surrendered three books,
including Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, to 'even' the trade. It was one
of the few things we had, but Vonnegut would love the irony since the book is
about the bombing of Dresden. Things only got worse when Trykver retaliated by
giving us half a German salami. Kersti wasted no time starting in on the
drop, as we carefully tasted tiny slivers of our gourmet delicacies in a
futile attempt to prolong their lifetime.

The next day, Karin wandered through the
market (a fun place to interact with the Chinese) buying fruits and vegetables,
always plentiful and fresh in China. Lunch was delicious cheese, sausage, and
tomato sandwiches, followed by juicy peaches for dessert.

We bought the scam travel insurance for the
buses so we could get tickets for the next leg of our trip. This bus station had
the most convenient design we've ever seen. You walk in the front, buy tickets
at the windows along the right side, then walk through the building to a loading
dock for bus roofs. "Don't fall over the edge." You walk straight out
on top of the bus and secure your bags, then take the stairs down to get into
the bus.

A group of Westerners, who didn't realize we
would be picking up more passengers along the way, had used the entire back row
of seats as storage, opting not to put their bags on top of the bus. The crew
got mad when they wouldn't move the bags, and went into the station, returning
with a fierce little woman to yell at them. Pretty soon they came to understand
that the bus wasn't moving until the bags were either on top of the bus or under
the seats. A third option of paying full fare for each occupied seat soon
materialized, and we were on our way when the bag owners decided to splurge.

In front of us were three rowdy guys wearing
beige photographer's jackets. Marc quickly got acquainted with them on the
eight-hour bus ride. The one in the middle was a blonde American wearing a
Turkish cap, the other two were bearded Turks. Marc started off by telling them
that they looked like an offshore speedboat racing team, but without helmets.

Arif Asci,
the wild man in the group, was wearing
a Turkish hat that looked like a small, beige, flat-bottomed burlap bag. He
rolled his hat down over his eyes when he napped. He was carrying two extremely
expensive Leica cameras, one small and one huge. He explained that they were
traveling by camel. Marc laughed and said, "Oh, that's what I smell!"
He insisted that they had left their camels at their hotel on the outskirts of
Lanzhou, so Marc asked, "At the caravanserai?" Surprised, Arif turned
to his friends exclaiming, "He doesn't believe me!" then reached into
his bag and pulled out a very professional, glossy 8x11 (A4) brochure for us.

Their brochure, The Silk Road by Camel
Caravan from Xian to Istanbul, showed their sponsors were ANA, Leica, Fuji,
etc. It displayed their photos, their plans, pictures of the Silk Road, and a
map tracing the eighteen-month journey they had started six weeks earlier. A
team of four, they were the first to make the journey down the Silk Road in
three hundred years.

The Turkish president had written letters on
sheepskin to all the presidents of the countries through which they were
trekking. Explaining their purpose when they presented their letters to Jiang
Zemin, he gave them letters expressing his appreciation, especially with helping
to boost China's tourist industry. He also guaranteed that they would help.
They still had to negotiate the price of permits down to US$17,000 from
US$50,000, which included the CITS guy who tried to force them into expensive
tours.

Arif Asçi, an art historian and
spokesman, is an artist who had become a photographer ten years earlier. He had
travelled extensively through China and the Central Asian countries. When the
Russian Republics opened up, he realized that with his similar language he could
communicate with most people. After reading hundreds of books to prepare, he
spent a year faxing sponsors, and they all agreed to support his dream of
retracing the famous route. He planned on doing a book of photos, magazine
article photojournalism, and a video documentary in English, Turkish, and
German.

Paxton Winters,
an experienced backpacker,
and filmmaker who spoke some Turkish, was doing the video documentary, as well
as photography and sound. He also had a laptop for uploading email and stories
to the Internet. Within a month, he expected to have a satellite phone. We gave
him many tips since he was new to the Internet.

Paxton sat in the back of the bus once trying
to type, but found it too hard to find the keys between bounces. He was not
pleased with the Turks' fear of computers and their refusal to recognize the
promotional possibilities. The rest of the team, Necat Nazaroglu and Murat
Özbey, were reporters in Turkey as well as being photographers for the
caravan. Murat, the quietest one in the group, sat behind us with his German
girlfriend.

Trekking 5-20km per day and resting one week
per month, they were going to take the low route through the Taklimakan Desert.
Next they planned to cross into Kyrgyzia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and
Turkmenistan. After Iran, they would go into Turkey and cross the Anatolian
steppes.

Arif explained that they needed to get to
sand, then on to Kashgar, where they planned to replace the ten camels they
bought in Inner Mongolia. The camels were in poor health, one dying from the
walk to Xian and another being put to sleep since its soft and tender foot
swelled from the asphalt. Their budget was limited, and camels cost
US$100-US$300 each. He told us about the coal truck drivers who communicate
"hello" by honking their air horns, scaring the camels and causing
them to buck, dumping their loads and costing the team an hour to reload. When
Arif caught up with one of the trucks the next day, he knifed a tire to prevent
him from doing it again.

We stopped at a Muslim restaurant in Linxia
(links-see-ah) for mutton and noodle soup with bread. Then we rattled another
three and a half hours on the bus through 4000m-high (12,500 ft) mountains, some
were green, some desolate brown. We started seeing fields of yellow flowers,
Tibetan stupas, and yaks on the second half of the ride.

A little further on we noticed some
interesting roadside billboards. They each had a large photo of a person with
some information, and a checkbox in the upper left corner, some of which had
been checked off. Two women teaching English explained that these were
"Most Wanted" photos with a listing of crimes. The check in the box
meant that they had been executed. China had executed 1000 people in the last
two months, many for petty crimes. This was part of a massive crackdown on
crime known as the "Strike Hard" campaign. Another man explained that the annual
numbers could be much higher than the six thousand that had been reported.
Executions are public events attended by 1.75 million people. Sometimes they are
held in stadiums, while cheering crowds applaud the executions.

In March 1998, Utne Reader reprinted a
Sciences article by David Rothman called "Body Shop". He went to
investigate China's booming organ-transplant business and ran into a chilling
wall of silence. "Nobody would admit, let alone discuss, what I knew from many
other sources to be true: that executed prisoners are the primary source of
China's organs, and that citizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and other
Pacific Rim nations travel regularly to China to obtain them." After human
rights groups uncovered Chinese government directives that clearly showed that
they were removing organs from executed prisoners, the government admitted it,
but said it was "rare".

On February 25, 1998, Associated Press
reported that the FBI conducted a sting operation in Manhattan. Two Chinese men
were charged with conspiracy in a scheme to ship body parts of executed Chinese
prisoners to the United States and to arrange for Americans to travel to China
for the transplant of kidneys, corneas, livers, and lungs. Then, in the March 9,
1998 issue, Time followed up with an article entitled "Body Parts
For Sale." The controversy arises, as it always does with harvesting
organs, over how the donations are solicited and under what circumstances they
can be used. The problem is that in China, the condemned donate whether they
want to or not and the government keeps the money.

Xiahe

Arriving at Xiahe (sheAH-her, or seeAH-her)
in the mountains of Gansu Province, we encountered a light sprinkle of rain and
ten dirty kids and men all saying, "Labrang Hotel." We escaped by
rushing off the bus and taking shelter in the station while they circled the
rest of the travellers who were busily rounding up their luggage.

Having prior knowledge of the
highly-recommended Tara Guesthouse, we waited for the crowd to disperse, loaded
up, and went for a ten-minute walk up 'the' road. We passed hundreds of monks in
crimson-burgundy robes, as there are more than 2000 monks studying here. Tibetans
are noticeably different from the Hans, and have ruby-colored cheeks like the
Mongolians. While still not used to foreigners, they smiled a lot.

We got a triple room for the price of a
double and paid for three nights. This was the minimum number of days we knew we
would need for a village this nice. Tsering, the hospitable owner from
Darjeeling (India), had travelled to San Francisco and spent the previous three
years working in downtown New York City. She told us she worked in a
Polish/Ukrainian restaurant on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 9th Street. She
returned to Xiahe three months prior, after hearing that her husband was sick.

At 2920m (9050 ft) elevation, the skies were
a beautiful deep shade of blue. The sun was intense during the day, yet it
didn't take long for the mercury to start dropping once the bright, full moon
made its appearance on this clear evening. Going next door, we had a hot dinner
of sweet-n-sour eggplant, vegetable and noodle soup, and pungent Tibetan
yak-butter tea. Finishing this, we wasted no time in the freezing temperatures,
rushing home to dive into our cozy sleeping bags.

Persuading ourselves to leave the cuddly
warmth of the sleeping bags the next morning wasn't easy. However, this town had
much to offer and we knew we'd have to come out eventually. We later learned
that our room was the coldest in the hotel, so we convinced Tsering to move us
to another room on the sunny side of the building.

After a splash with ice-water from the barrel
on the terrace, we ventured down to the street corner for a loaf of heavy
Tibetan bread, then back to the hotel. We stopped by the kitchen for fresh yak
yogurt on our way up to the lounge, affectionately known as the 'glasshouse',
and also a good place to meet travellers. This was a warm sunny room with large
glass windows on three walls giving a panoramic view of the valley. From this
vantage point, Xiahe looked surprisingly similar to the pictures of Lhasa in
Tibet.

After breakfast, we went for a stroll through
the lamasery, accidentally straying into monks' residences in a 80x80m (250
sg-ft) compound. Monks in their teens and twenties were playing ping-pong (table
tennis) on a concrete table and invited Marc to play -- they were easy on him!
Funny watching them run in Tibetan shoes while wrapped in yards of burgundy wool
robes. Karin pulled out the camera, took some photos, and was instantly
surrounded by five curious monks. They nearly drained a pair of expensive and
rare batteries playing with the zoom feature, until she finally buried the
camera in the bag.

It was interesting to see how happy,
friendly, and unafraid of women the monks were. Thai monks tended to jump out
of their skin whenever they come face-to-face with a woman. When Karin broke out
the language book, one of them pointed at her watch, then at the "How much
do I owe you?" phrase in the book. Karin did what many people do to us, she
pretended not to understand. After a second round of ping-pong, we wandered
around the compound some more. We were soon noticed by someone at the front gate
and shown the way out, meaning we got kicked out.

Locating the official entrance to the
monastary, we blew past the unmanned ticket office -- it was lunch time. We
joined a tour group of country-Chinese led by a monk. There were old farmers in
blue or green polyester Mao suits, with some of the women having tiny feet from
being bound. Following them into a temple, there were colorful and scary frescos
and the usual array of Buddha's. The fragrant smell of yak butter and the sight
of monks everywhere gave us the feeling that the place was alive, unlike the one
in Beijing. Not being able to follow what the monk was saying, we abandoned the
tour.

Meandering back towards town, we soon spotted
the Turks having lunch. We joined them for yogurt, steamed rice, and a plate of
beef, onions and tomatoes. Murat cooked, after Arif refused to accept the 'beef
fat' and onions the waiter brought out. When the waiter brought the bill, Arif
scribbled all over it, determining the new price. The owner reluctantly
accepted it after Arif said something in Turkish and the owner's attempt to
discuss the bill only found Arif's hand pushing it back. The rest of the group
is in for a helluva eighteen months.

We went to Mansu's restaurant to get Dorine's
flashlight from the owner. He knew where it was, but needed a day to retrieve
it, basically holding it hostage while trying to get us to take one of his
tours. We weren't biting, so he invited us to the back of the restaurant and
into the kitchen, trying to make us uncomfortable and pressure us into accepting
the tour. We left quickly, letting him know that we would see him soon.

At our hotel we met Dawn, a funny and
talkative New Yorker. She had been teaching English in Shandong and explained
that, "There's nothing worse than a classroom full of children who think
they're the center of attention, all spoiled rotten!" The greedy guy who
recruited her refused to give her the contract that he promised, and cut her pay
after she arrived in China (not an uncommon story), so she went on strike and
wrote letters to her students' parents explaining why she was refusing to work.
Things finally settled down and he gave in. Now she likes teaching there enough
to want to study Chinese Literature or World Studies when she returns to the
States.

We went to dinner with Dawn. The baked
vegetable momos (Tibetan steamed buns) were excellent, the eggplant was
okay. The chicken, on the other hand, was overcooked and tough and we had to
send it back. Still, the owner put up an argument when we paid only half the
cost of the chicken. Dawn held her own and we finally had to walk out, but the
owner blocked the exit. After five minutes of calm negotiating, Marc raised his
voice and the owner finally gave up.

We went back to the hotel lounge in search of
a warm place to talk until bedtime. It was a very popular hangout, so we were
soon in a deep discussion of routes and strategies with the other guests who
were also west bound. Hamutal, from Israel, was making a detour in her trip so
she could see the Turkish team's camels in Lanzhou. Dan and Emma from England
were on their way to Dunhuang. Tony and Mindy from Australia were on the same
schedule as ours heading for Pakistan.

The next day, we joined the 'lounge crew' for
an official tour of the Labrang Lamasery (17th century), this time with a tour
leader who spoke a few words of English. The interiors of the temples had more
large and impressive seated Buddha's, beautiful wall frescoes, and scary wall
paintings better seen in books than described here. One Buddha pose represented:
"It's OK!" There were very detailed one-square-meter sand paintings
under glass, 2000-year-old tusks from India, and ancient Tibetan chain mail used
in battle. The main hall that seats 4000 was immensely colorful and the artisans
much more skilled. All buildings were slightly warmer than a meat locker, some
housing exquisitely-carved yak-butter sculptures.

When the tour ended at 12:30pm, we heard the
sound of music. Tracking it down to a grassy courtyard with trees, we found a
monk blowing a 3m-long (9 ft) horn which was supported on the ground. Two older
monks played meter-long high-pitch horns. We sat in front for the low bass
vibes, while the trio continued playing, seemingly oblivious to our presence.

Trying to get into another temple, we were
quickly chased out. We roamed through the east end of the lamasery, then went
south along the base of the mountain, turning the prayer wheels. These signify
that the Wheel of Life (symbolizing the levels of rebirth) keeps turning, and
helps worshippers concentrate on their meditation. We exited back onto the main
road. Back at the Tibetan restaurant across from our hotel, we sat under a tarp
in the back courtyard, eating mutton-filled momos and Tibetan tea made
from yak-buttermilk.

Later, in our search for more momos at
dinnertime, we ran into the Turkish guys, who recommended the same place we ate
lunch at. Some teenage Tibetan girls, deeply tanned from exposure to the intense
sunlight in the mountains, joined us for a bit when Arif teased them. The
wildest-looking one in the bunch wanted to see the hair on the men's arms, then
jumped and screeched when she saw Arif's. The group ran away screaming when they
saw Paxton's legs. They returned and the leader wanted to see all of our chests
after having seen Arif's. When he asked to see hers first, she shrieked,
"Meiyou!" which this time meant "No way!" They ran away, not
to return, when Paxton jokingly threatened to cut the leader's long braids with
a large knife that Arif carries on his side.

Up at 5:45am, we speed-packed, bought a loaf
of Tibetan bread, then caught a trishaw for a five-minute downhill roll to the
bus station. No large buses, so we bargained with a tout who insisted his
minibus was going to Lanzhou, although the characters for Linxia were on a small
sign in the window, and everyone getting on board was going to Linxia. His
asking price was four times what we'd paid to get here, but we got him down to
half that rate when we showed him our original Lanzhou-Xiahe tickets with the
fare. He decided to collect as soon as the bus got rolling, so we changed our
destination to Linxia (the halfway point) and paid him what everyone else was
paying -- he was not happy, but we were.

At the bus station in Linxia, a swarm of
touts descended upon us, asking way too much. We went inside and bought tickets
at the counter, and a tout escorted us to a minibus. Minibuses were lined up in
the alley outside, but ours was only half-full, so the driver was in no hurry to
leave. Suddenly there was a mad rush of buses reversing downhill into the alley,
almost colliding into each other -- police officers in white uniforms were
walking in our direction.

Our driver wasn't quick enough and ended up
having to surrender some papers and stand on the sidewalk with a sheepish,
embarrassed smile. He was surrounded by a crowd of curious gawkers, while the
policeman shared some words of wisdom. Next thing we know, the driver is back
behind the wheel. Doing a U-turn, he drove us out the back of the alley. He
parked the bus half a mile away on a bridge and waited while the other tout
ironed out the wrinkles. Once he recovered his papers, the bus was almost full
and we were ready to roll.

Lanzhou

Once again in one of our favorite cities, we
wasted no time resorting to old habits. We frequented the markets night and day.
We ran into Hamutal and joined her to meet the Turks for dinner at the night
market. There was no trouble spotting them shopping for watermelons. Settling at
a nearby stall with the right 'menu', we got a table for eight. Murat ran off
and came back with beer and fried rice, while the waitresses served beef and
noodle soup. Fried mushrooms, cauliflower, skewered mutton and bread rounded out
the meal. It was a feast for the palate.

Dessert started when Arif broke out the
watermelon and applied his huge knife. He split it in half lengthwise, then
quartered each half. Cutting vertical slits along each wedge, he ran the knife
along the rind, leaving juicy triangles. The staff finally threw us out after
they had cleaned all the other tables. We made it back to the hotel in plenty of
time for the 11:00pm curfew.

We had been told that the woman at the train
station window for foreigners was rude and would try to sell us expensive
tickets. Surprisingly, she smiled for Marc and gave him the correct tickets. No
two situations seemed alike, but this one couldn't have been any easier. Wish
she spoke English so we could have thanked her properly, and heard her side of
the story about foreigners.

Hotel maids all over China must go through
similar invasion training. They invariably have the same technique of unlocking
the door, then knocking as they enter the room. Some don't even bother
knocking. We resorted to more severe tactics, having given up politely asking
them to knock and wait for us to respond. The first 'close encounter' with our
exposed anatomy brought immediate results. Quickly salvaging their composure,
they learned to knock before barging in! Customer service has a long, hard road
ahead of it.

In the market, we ran into Yafit and Eron, an
Israeli couple we met in Beijing. They had gone to Ürümqi, and were heading for Xiahe, but were afraid of
Kashgar due to rumors about fundamental Muslims. Their train ran out of water,
so they had the bright idea of boiling some with their gas stove. They saw no
problem with this, but a Chinese man got very upset, so they shut it down and
put it away. Cops were there fast, and one confiscated it without giving them a
receipt. The cops refused to give it back, as promised, when they got in town.
They were in Lanzhou to see his boss, and hoped to get it back. They were
lucky not to have been fixed and deported!

Our last day in town, we took a bouncy
miandi-ride (me-yen-dee, the bright-yellow microbus taxis that look like
a loaf of bread, just shorter) out to the truck-stop hotel where the Turkish
team had three rooms and parking space for the camels (a modern caravanserai).
Going out back to see the ten camels, we took some pictures. Murat was like a
kid, running around with lots of energy and playing with the meter-high (three
feet) kangal dogs. At nine months, these dogs were already huge.

We all piled into a miandi to go to the
university. They had been invited for lunch by students they'd met at the market
the night before. The ride seemed to last forever, and by the time we got there
it was time for us to head back and catch our train. The caravan completed the
trip in November 1997, and in 1998, they published their book,
"The Last Caravan On The Silk Road."
For more information about the Silk Road, visit:
Silk Road Foundation.

Back at the hotel, the group we'd met in
Xiahe was in a state of panic. The Chinese travel agency, which had been so
friendly and helpful to us, had bad news about their train tickets. Dan and Emma
were having problems with their tickets and would not be in the same car with
Tony and Mindy. It's at times like these that we were glad we had the
independent ticketing routine down.

Having some time to spare, Karin went to the
market to stock up on food for the road, while Marc stayed with the group. When
it was time to load-up and relocate to the train station, the travel agent
volunteered to help us get a miandi. There was no way to fit all six of us with
our bags into one miandi, so he came up with the bright idea of putting all the
bags in a separate miandi. None of us was quite ready to wave goodbye forever to
our bags as they rode off in a speeding miandi, so we split up and piled into
two miandis for the race to the train station.

Once there, Dan drew attention to himself by
stepping on and over a row of back-to-back seats, enraging an old man in charge
of order in the enormous waiting room packed with nearly three hundred people.
It was too late to take it out on Dan, who was now in the other aisle, so the
man ran up to Mindy (137cm or 4'6" tall), pushed her, and told her to go
around. Marc ran between them, and being 186cm (6'1") in his boots, with a
beard, the man kept a respectable distance and pretended not to notice when Marc
started pointing at him and the other old man who started pushing Dan. Things
calmed down, but Dan was not allowed to sit while we waited twenty minutes for
the train to arrive.

We were on the train when it pulled out at
5:00pm heading farther west, but each couple was in a different car. Marc got
talking to Ming, an industrial pump salesman who spoke some English. He took
Marc to the dining car to buy water, and when it didn't have any, he went seven
more cars and bought it for Marc. We are starting to think that the best way to
meet Chinese people is on trains, where they can relax and be themselves.

At one point, the guy on the bunk above us,
who works for the railroad, started smoking. Marc asked him to stop and pointed
to the 'No Smoking' sign. He was reluctant, but left. Later, when Marc ran off
two more smokers, the old people in our car showed their appreciation by nodding
and smiling. There were no hard feelings later, as harmony is the most important
thing here.

It got cool suddenly as the train started
climbing into beautiful green grasslands. Around 8:00pm the gang showed up on
their way to the dining car to celebrate Emma's birthday. We secured our bags
and followed with a cup of tea. Sharing the famous birthday song, we offered
some cake to two Chinese students who joined us to practice their language
skills. One of them, who wants to teach English to the locals, invited us to his
village to see the wheat being harvested. At 9:00pm a waiter came over to us,
and tried to charge what would amount to his day's wage for the table. He tried
to justify this saying it was "cocktail hour." We stalled him for
awhile then called it a day.

The CITS agent in Lanzhou told Emma and Dan
that the ticket problem had been corrected. They were laughing about it on the
train because they thought he had made a RMB 300 (US$36) mistake. Now they were
upset as they found out they were only ticketed halfway to their destination. At
that point, they would have to move from the sleeper compartment and join the
herd in hard seats at 1:00am.

Around 11:00pm, Emma woke us, saying she
hadn't seen Dan in hours. We ignored her, since we were tired, especially of
them. He could speak Chinese, and had met some people to talk to. At 1:00am,
beds in the sleeper compartment were available, so they bought them, but not
without a steep "service fee" for the conductor.

After a comfortable nine hours of sleep
(since the speaker was broken), we woke at 8:00am to a dismal view of rocky
sands on a flat, barren, hot plain between brown snow-capped mountains. The
train rolled by the Jiayuguan (jah-you-gwahn) Fort at the end of the Great Wall,
reaffirming that this was farewell to the Han Chinese. From there the terrain
got flatter and sparsely fertile. The sand was black on top, as if the earth had
been scorched by a fire. The dark ground stretched outward until it transformed
into pink rocky mountains in the distance.

As it got hotter, Karin took a nap. Marc
talked with a young Chinese engineer-in-training who used to work with Americans
in Lanzhou. He now works with the Japanese on building projects in Dunhuang, an
oasis in the desert. The caves are a UN World Cultural Heritage Site, much nicer
than Datong's. They don't let you see many of the caves, because they have
drawings that are considered pornographic by the Chinese. It is also a popular
hangout for backpackers, like Dali and Yangshuo, so we bypassed it.

Visiting the Aussies, we confirmed plans to
rendezvous in Ürümqi and Pakistan. Hamutal, Dan,
and Emma had gotten off the train in Dunhuang. They planned to be in Dharamsala
at the same time we would be there, after visiting Tibet, Nepal, and India. This
is one of the typical looping routes that many travellers take in this region.
The desert looked like an open-pit mine, with land just cleared for
construction.

Later on, it turned beige with more sand and
less rocks or colors. The magic number seems to be thirty-six hours for our
train rides, and this one covered 1800km (1100 miles) of desolate landscapes. At
6:00am the train attendant hustled us out of bed, giving us just enough time to
clean up and get our bags ready. The sunrise gave the town outside a deceptively
warm glow.

We hopped off at the 'Turfan station' in
Daheyan, a bleak little place whose claim to fame can only be its proximity to
Turfan. Buses were waiting, but strangely, nobody tried to get our attention.
Everyone else seemed to have the same idea, as they walked out the small gate,
so we followed them.

Walking a few blocks to the bus station, we
found a minibus that was already full, so we parked ourselves on the terrace out
front. A tout in his forties came over and offered us twice the
normal fare. We checked inside at the window and they quoted us the same fare,
and told us we would have to buy our ticket from the bus driver.

Karin left Marc in charge of the bags and
touts, and went in search of food, returning with some oily mantou bread
and tasty Muslim bread. We asked the next driver who came over, "How
much?" and he also failed the test, so we said, "No, thank you,"
and the bus left half-full without bargaining. Word got around, and a third came
over and asked if we were students. We showed him our 'teacher cards', and he
answered with the right fare.

Loaded up with good seats, we were rolling by
7:30am on July 6, 1996. Our path followed along a rocky, dry riverbed in between
distant mountain ranges. This is a vast glacier melt-zone, and in some places
the road had washed-away, making for a bumpy ride. An hour later, we arrived to
the scorching 47°C (116°F) heat of the Turfan Desert Basin, the second
lowest depression in the world and one of the hottest places on earth.
"Welcome to Hell!" said the sign in Chinese.

Although we settled down in August, we had to
return to Curaçao for a few months. We have acclimated to life back in
the States pretty well, and it has been nice hearing from everyone. If you
would like to know when new dispatches are available, send us a note and we will
add you to the mailing list.